Ukraine
June 7, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Elizabeth Stauffer declares that “Tucker’s back” in the adjacent post and includes Tucker’s new ten-minute monologue posted to Twitter. “Tucker’s back” doesn’t quite have the zing of “Winston is back!” — the message signaled to the British Fleet when Churchill returned to the Admiralty in the opening days of World War II — but it’s good news. Like Elizabeth, I hope he has found a new home on Twitter. Tucker
»
May 3, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Russian government is claiming that last night, the Ukrainians tried to assassinate Vladimir Putin with a drone attack on his Kremlin residence. Videos do show something streaking across the sky and being blown up: Ukrainians say the Russians staged the incident to justify a planned terrorist attack on Ukraine. Intuitively, that sounds more likely. I am not sure what Ukraine would gain by assassinating Putin. But we may never
»
March 18, 2023 — John Hinderaker
Ron DeSantis struck a moderate note in his recent comments on the war in Ukraine, drawing criticism from many Republicans. The Wall Street Journal headlines: “Pence and Other Potential GOP 2024 Rivals Pounce on DeSantis Over Ukraine Aid.” Former Vice President Mike Pence, without mentioning Ron DeSantis by name, rebuked the Florida governor Saturday for his isolationist approach to the war in Ukraine. Isolationist approach? Seriously? A sharp divide inside
»
March 18, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
The utter failure of the Anchorage, Alaska, meeting between top U.S. and Chinese diplomats held in March 2021 set the tone for relations going forward. Diplomacy flew out the window at the get-go and did not return. The hostility coming from the Chinese was impossible to miss. It was made immediately and abundantly clear that then-Chinese Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs Yang Jiechi had neither
»
March 5, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In this weekend’s Review section of the Wall Street Journal Barton Swaim reviews “candidate memoirs” by Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Ron DeSantis. It is a graceful and perceptive review. Pompeo’s Never Give an Inch stands out. However, Swaim seems to chide Pompeo for “devot[ing] so much attention to rehearsing the lies, exaggerations and incompetence of his critics in the news media.” Let us consider this anecdote that
»
February 26, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I’ve seen several perspicacious queries about media coverage of the Ukrainian war, namely, why don’t we see very much battle footage—or very much front line footage for that matter? All we seem to get are some set-piece videos, practically b-roll at this point, of long-range artillery being fired. Are there no reporters embedded at or near the front lines? Back in the primitive days of Vietnam, when any film footage
»
February 22, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In 1968 Nelson Rockefeller ran a presidential campaign based in large part on full-page newspaper advertisements. One such Rockefeller advertisement was permeated with high-minded assertions stating “We must do this” and “We must do that.” As I recall, and I am writing from memory, William F. Buckley, Jr. wrote a column that took up that Rockefeller campaign ad. He commented: “We must cut the crap.” The thought comes to mind
»
February 21, 2023 — Scott Johnson
With his trip to Kyiv and related festivities one has to wonder if President Biden isn’t shoving his deconstruction of the United States in our face. The deconstruction proceeds in word and deed every day. It is hard to keep up. It is already a cliché to observe that neither he nor the condescending clown he placed in charge of the Department of Transportation has bothered to show up in
»
February 9, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Ukraine war has made odd bedfellows. Pretty much all Americans are pro-Ukraine, but opinion divides on how far we should aid the Ukrainians militarily, and whether we should push for a negotiated peace. Throughout my lifetime, until very recently, liberals have been 1) reflexively anti-war, no matter how sound the justification for military action seemed to be; 2) always in favor “peace” negotiations, no matter how futile–just consider the
»
January 31, 2023 — Steven Hayward
As a follow up to our previous item asking questions about our grand strategy toward Russia, Iran, and the Ukranian war (such as whether the Biden Administration has a grand strategy at all), this item from today’s Wall Street Journal jumps out: Yet the largest ground war in Europe since World War II isn’t translating into boom times for U.S. defense contractors. Hobbled by supply chain disruptions, a tight labor
»
January 29, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This week’s geopolitical news should raise a lot of questions about what is going on, and whether the “strategists” in the Biden Administration have any clue what they are doing. So we’re going to send 31 Abrams tanks to Ukraine—eventually (because it will take months to get them deployed). This decision is apparently thought necessary to get Germany to send 200 of its smaller and simpler Leopard tanks. Abrams are
»
December 10, 2022 — John Hinderaker
The war in Ukraine seems to have faded as a topic of concern, but not because there is nothing to worry about. The Secretary-General of NATO sees a “real possibility” of all-out war between Russia and the NATO allies: There is a “real possibility” that the war in Ukraine could spill over into a full-scale conflict between Nato and Russia, the head of the military alliance has warned, in some
»
September 28, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines? Your guess is as good as mine. It does seem peculiar to think Russia would have blown up their own pipeline, but it is not inconceivable that a faction of Russia’s military is trying to sabotage Putin as a prelude for ousting him, or that Putin sees it as a kind of “Cortez burning his ships” moment to indicate that he is all-in
»
August 22, 2022 — John Hinderaker
Darya Dugina was the daughter of Alexander Dugin, one of Vladimir Putin’s close associates, a leading pro-Putin intellectual, and a vigorous supporter of the Ukraine invasion. Dugin is an exponent of “Eurasianism,” arguing that Russia is a unique civilization that has rejected Western liberalism and is the heir to the Russian Empire. Darya herself was a journalist and a supporter of her father’s ideas and Putin’s regime. On Saturday night,
»
July 30, 2022 — Steven Hayward
Emina Melonic is the perfect person to reflect on the meaning of the Vogue cover shot of the Zelenskyys: The war in Ukraine has been odd, to say the least. At the beginning, I was following it closely, especially since I saw the echoes of my own experience, namely in war-torn Bosnia. I saw innocent people dying and displaced out of their homes. But just like most things in this strange,
»
July 29, 2022 — John Hinderaker
A friend sent me a link to this paper, which says that, contrary to much of what we see in the press, Western sanctions are devastating Russia’s economy. The authors are all associated with Yale; subject to that caveat, here it is: As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters into its fifth month, a common narrative has emerged that the unity of the world in standing up to Russia has
»
July 11, 2022 — John Hinderaker
My friend John Ondrasik (Five For Fighting) emailed to say that he is releasing a video that was filmed in Ukraine in May. First his message, then the video: In the middle of May I traveled to Kyiv with an amazing humanitarian group, Save Our Allies, to film a video in the ruins of the Antonov airport with The Ukrainian Orchestra for my Ukrainian tribute song “Can One Man Save
»
